This week, we introduced our projects to the class in groups. Our project failed to meet the hopes that our group had for it. The night before creating the model, we set up 3 vibration sensors that were working fine on a threshold = 1. However, the day of the midterm project user testing, our sensors suddenly became unresponsive and we had to shut down our stand. Luckily, we still have hope to turn our project around with motion sensors instead of vibration sensors.

Above is the trial we had on the day of presenting the projects. I was able to record most of what our user testers said to us and was actually brought with a lot of constructie criticism. Below is all of our notes that I took during the user testing session.

Documentation October 19, 2018

The four elements catch the eye and the

So what is the main point of the interaction

How many people can play

Why are there three targets = more area to hit and connected 3 different sensors to be more innovative

What are the things from last week in class that we included in the project

Paint some kind of design with illustrator instead of drawing

When doing the laser-cutting we can create a better box

Perhaps we can create a model with two motion sensors and instead of the unresponsive sensors we can track the accuracy of the cards.

Two different breadboards and a gap in-between two motion sensors

We can even make several motion sensors and a large wall with holes in it

Make the intuition of the game more clear to the users

In our source code, we used example “Knock” and another example code online for our 7-segment display. Some of the code I put into // because we did not need it but we did not want to delete it right away.

Define interaction. Analyze two interactive projects, one that you like and one that you dislike. Design an interactive device, based on your definition of interaction, to be used in the year 2118. Prototype it without the use of electronics. Indicate how this proposal derives from your critique of the established form of interaction.

My own definition of interaction:

The past reading mentions that Interactive devices receive input from the user, process the associated data, and produce a corresponding output.

In my opinion, interaction includes two parts: interactive and action. Interactive means that interaction at least must have two participants, one to emit signal while one to receive and react to the signal. What’s more, the one who sends the signal can get the feedback and adjust the information it sends.

And action means the input and output should be presented in some certain way, no matter the online or underline.

The idea of the combination of food and robot is creative and innovative. Because in the traditional way of thinking, we would consider food is to eat while the product like the robot should be made of iron.

Another reason is that nowadays, what we lack is not the advanced technology, but the sense of art in products. The desserts in this project are both eyeable and delectable.

The way the music record runs, the movement of the robot indicates the interaction inside this project as well.

These are the reasons why I like Déguster l’augmenté- Adding new dimensions to food the most.

“Open Data Cam” is a project to help quantify the world. The example shown on the website is called” smart traffic cam”, however, there is no need for the drivers to know how many cars are participating in the traffic themselves, because GPS nowadays is advanced enough to tell us how the traffic condition is, and if there is a traffic jam, there would be a radio and phone app to tell us in time. Besides, the cost of $500 cannot be afforded by all the people. What’s more, the appearance of the product has no sense of beauty. And this kind of camera may raise the problem of personal privacy.

The proposal is derived from sacred Tree of Souls in Avatar which can store creature’s memory and souls.

Combined with the desire of human wanting to learn more knowledge quickly, we develop the idea of our memory tree. And because it is a product, we make it into a forest to show the quantity. 2118 must be an age of high-technology and data, all kinds of things can be transformed into data and be stored. Besides, with the development of the technology, people gradually lose their emotion, that’s why we put the download of emotion into the function of this product as well. The memory forest uses a pipe to make the connection between the user and the body of the forest.

The process of uploading and downloading shows the interaction between the user and our product.

At the end of our presentation, we strengthen the importance of control our desire of getting more powerful through advanced technology. The technology itself is a double-edged sword, we should be careful when we use it.

Function:

Upload and download knowledge and memory online.

Upload and download emotions

To show how does this memory forest works, our group created three different scenes. The first one is about knowledge, the second is about memory and the third one is about the bad effect of overusing advanced technology.

scenario:

Character

Journalist: Alexis

AI: Tina

Customer 1: Veronica

Customer 2: Coco

Customer 3: Frank

J: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Today, September 24, 2118, we are proud to introduce you to a product from NYUSH: Memory Forest. This is a new type of interaction that can share everything in the universe, and it will redefine social media. Let go and have a look.

[ C1, C2, C3 on

Scene 1:

J: Hello guys! Do you want to experience the Memory Forest?

C1: No, I am so confused about my GPS reading, the deadline two hours later! I have no time to waste on this silly tree!

J: Exactly, this device can download any person’s memory and thinking into your brain, making it easy to acquire and learn all the knowledge.

C1: Really? I will try it!

AI：Uploading your trouble.

Uploading succeed.

Matching suitable memory for you.

Downloading Prof. Corpis’s memory for you.

Downloading succeed!

C1: <ideas of the Social Contract> Ohh I get it! I have tons of ideas to write my essay now!

Scene 2:

C2: Wow awesome. What else can this memory forest do?

J：Apart from getting memories and thought, you can also tell it your desire and even emotions. Why not try it yourself? Do you have anything you lost but is extremely meaningful for you?

C2: Ohhh! I had a really cute toy unicorn, accompanying me for nearly ten years. But I lost it when I was traveling in Pandora. Wait, how can you find exactly what I want??

Warning! Warning! Information overflow! Human body can not receive all the information!

C3: DIE

AI：Advanced technologies are double-edged swords, they can help us while they can hurt us. How they work all depends on the way we use. Once your desire surpasses your virtue, you’ll lose control and be hurt by these techniques. So be aware of what you can do and what you can’t.

The process of making this project:

Materials:

Tubes—supporter

Paperboard—top of the memory tree

Cystosepiment and paper tape—connection

Simulation leaves, wires and emoji pillow—decoration

Problem:

We do not know how to connect the tubes with the boards.

Solution:

After learning the features of hot melt adhesive, foam glue, and paper tape, we chose to use hot melt adhesive because it is the stickiest one.

Personally I really enjoyed this experimental film. It reminds me of a short story called The Garden of Forking Paths written by Jorge Luis Borges. I love the Title “Manakamana” because it is repeated and circling structure, just like the structure of the film. Meanwhile the word gives me a sense of mystery, which set off the religious atmosphere.

The film is kind of strange. I don’t understand where is the cable car going. In the three rounds at the beginning, the cable car stopped and picked new passengers, and kept going up. In the fourth round we knew the destination while the cable kept going up and this time it passed through the totally different scenes.

The goal of the film is confusing and blurry. At first I thought the director was trying to display a kind of inner psychological activity. It not only reflected the pilgrims’ inner activity but also reflected the collective unconsciousness of the human. The human are struggling to go up into the paradise, getting rid of the flesh and blood and the chains from the reality.

As I did the research, I found the director tried to discuss about the relationship between nature and science. The interval darkness suggested the interval transitions in the cinema and the interspace between the project machine’s rotation. The director tried to combine the cinema and the film together. However the film did not make me feel this point. Maybe it is because I did not seat in the cinema and watched this movie.

The film, Kings of Nowhere by Betzabé Garcia, is a poem. It is delicate, gorgeous and beautiful. It creates a strong sense of loneliness but the film actually seldom directly describes the loneliness in the places and its residents.

First is the color. The color style is cold, most of which is grey, blue and green. The saturability is low. Amazingly the color does not make the film look abandoned. It looks a little bit sad and lonely, but also harmonious and peaceful.

Second is the scenery. I love the river, the island, the flourishing grass and trees. There is a scene that a man with a cow approaching closer to the camera. The flourishing green grass overfilled the screen. The scenery in the film is full of vigor, which is contrast with the sense of loneliness. There is a tension within the film that impressed me a lot.

Third is the composition of the camera. Most of the time the shoot stands out the single person or several people. It suggests that this community is lonely and like a small island in the sea, while the connection between the people are close and warm. It does not only strengthen the lonely sense, but also reflects the warmness and affection within the residents.

At last is the way the director narrates the story. The director restrains his emotion very well. The style is gentle and calm. There is no heartbreaking emotion but very impressive.

This movie actually did not catch me because I cannot really understood its narrative. It jumps from one situation to situation without strong logic and it made less sense for me. However it did created a peaceful and tranquil atmosphere. Because the shoots and frames have a power, which I call, a kind of purity, lively and firm power. The composition of frame is clear and attracting.

I like this dance shoot best. It is a long shoot with background music. The original song recorded from the local people worked very well because I can hear the happiness and joy from the song. The dance is completed by the man and his wife.

First, the emotion and eye connection between the couple are vivid and impressive. They are better than any other actors’ emotion and facial expression in the films. Second, the gestures and body language are powerful and show the wildness. The long shoot totally focus on the dancing of the couple without any other distractions. The black and white color stand out this kind of purity.

Seafood in Shanghai is an interactive documentary that takes viewers on a tour through the timeline of the seafood they love to eat. In light of the recent changes to the market and heightened interest in seafood products, we take viewers on a tour of Jiangyang Wholesale Seafood Market to get a glimpse at what goes on behind the scenes.

Interactively, this project is presented on a dinner table. You can click each plate for a corresponding story behind the seafood item depicted. The centerpiece is the buddha, explore the table to understand its significance at this particular seafood market!

In order to design the website in HTML, I selected the images and coded them together to form the table. Each plate links to a full-screen embed youtube video.

My initial vision for this project was to take viewers through an interactive experience of the seafood process, from beginning to end. The documentary would begin on a boat with a catchman, documenting his process of procuring the initial product. Then, it would document the journey of each food item from catch, to wholesale supply, all the way down to retail purchase at a restaurant. Due to scheduling and organizational issues, I was not able to execute the full vision for the project. However, I was able to get a full experience at the seafood market as well as some important insight into the business as a whole.

As it stands, Seafood in Shanghai is an interactive experience that documents the process of different seafood items within the JiangYang wholesale seafood market. Also included is an interview with Lin, a major seafood supplier and restaurant owner in Shanghai. The inclusion of his interview is meant to give viewers a retailer’s perspective of the industry and business.

There were several learning points for me while working on this project. In hindsight, I definitely would have partnered up with someone from class as it was extremely difficult to schedule and execute things with my personal partners. Relying on others to get things done was also a major learning point, as I found myself wasting a lot of time waiting around for people to pull through for me. Next time, I will execute as much as I can by myself or make sure that I can better calculate the risk of being left to do things by myself. Teamwork is incredibly crucial when working on a documentary, and this one was no exception. Being that most of the film was conducted in Chinese, this also added another dimension. Had I been working with a team, roles could have been delegated, thus resulting in less stress and wright on my shoulders.

Setbacks aside, I think the struggles I endured while working on this project were actually for the better. Now, I understand every role in documentary film making and have the ability to delegate accordingly. As I continue working on Seafood in Shanghai, I will make sure to at least have a dedicated audio technician, translator, and someone to assist with editing and post-production as well. On this project, I handled the direction, interview direction, filming, audio, and post-production, while managing several other video projects as well. Thankfully the main thing I was meticulous about was file management, which paid off in the end.

In addition to working with a team, given a next time I would also try harder to spend more time building a relationship with my subjects prior to shooting, so as to make the process more seamless. When reviewing my footage after the fact, I realized that I had to do a lot of interjecting and explaining. These steps can be mitigated next time by pre-planning and solidifying the vision before going out in the field. This was my first documentary and my first seafood documentary, so I did a lot of learning along the way!

For the interactive portion, I would ideally present this documentary as a site-specific installation. It would be a screening event with viewers sitting around a table and the documentary would be projected onto the plates. Each course would feature a different type of seafood. For example: viewers would first watch the process of lobster from catch to final plate presentation, then the first course of lobster would be served on the plate. After each course, plates would be cleared and a different food would be highlighted. At the end, there would be some sort of commentary or open-ended question posed about food ethics.

David and I shoot Bao steel factory the whole semester because it is a place full of contradictions and is very interesting. Originally we shot the factory itself, but at last we decided to shoot the community around the factory, displaying how Bao steel factory influences people’s life.

We made the physic map because we wanted to show the geography information. Bao steel is far away from the city center. As we interviewed, we found that although the housing price was low because it is far away from the city center, but as economy developed, the housing price is higher and higher, and the workers cannot afford the price, so they move to the towns outside the Shanghai.

I did the interview, map design, laser cutting and audio editing. The interview part is actually the most difficult part. Because nobody wanted to be interviewed so I just hide the Tascam in my pocket and pretend I was just chatting with them. Therefore there are a lot of background noise in the interview and because people were talking casually, the volume of the sound are very unstable.

Personally, I like the stories in Leye Village clip best because I had many interviews with different people and got many information. And I like the frames in the Hospital clip best because it is amazing to look the factory from the top of the hospital. The audience can see the smoke and fire clearly. But for hospital I did not get enough material. Fortunately, I kept the Tascam on all the time so it caught some words about hospital from the chatting with people.

In the original idea, there will be two videos on the screen simultaneously, the con and the pro. But ann said it was too obvious so we combine the cons and pros together. We don’t want to judge the Bao steel, but show all the contradictions to the audience and let them judge.

For Interactive Documentary final project, me and Carol really wish to continue with the Bao Steel piece. We find the place interesting that it is filled with tons of controversies.

We visit there six times, doing casual talk to people and let them naturally talk about their life with a special companion – Bao Steel factory. We choose three special locations to focus on and finally we wish to combine the documentary piece with 3D model to really show the tangible feeling of the piece.

Development processes:

Here is a quick look at the final piece:

Bao Steel is a location-based interactive documentary which examines the tensions between the Bao Steel factory and the people living around it. Bao Steel located in Bao Shan District, the northeast side of Shanghai. The factory was constructed in 1979 to help China catch up with Japan economically. Since then, the factory has boost the economy growth of Shanghai, and in larger scale – China. Nevertheless, the pollution generated by the factory negatively affect people’s life around the factories; the housing price is increasing rapidly; and the infrastructures are still. The factory, therefore, becomes a center of controversies…

David Lin and Carol Chen intends to use location-based interaction to show the dynamics of Bao Steel Factory and its relations with the local community in a tangible way. We use laser-cutting and 3D printing to create the 3D map where users could interact with the map by scanning the QR code.

Our project aimed to discover and explain the human emotion of fear through a series of interviewes intervined with animations and presented on a website in a nonlinear structure. Although we haven’t managed to make as much animations as we wanted to and the level of interactivity is not quite top-notch, the project in its final version is in a presentable state.

How we shared the tasks:

Tyler:

recorded three of the six interviews

conducted four of the six interviews

made the website

did some pre-editing on a few interviews

Máté:

recorded three of the six interviews

conducted two of the six interviews

did the editing

did the animations

made research for the additional interactive parts (we didn’t have time to include these in the final product)

How we could move forward:

conducting interviews with a more diverse group of people

add more animations

add more interactivity

With this project both of us have learned valuable lessons about the movie making process from recording to editing, as well as the exact nature of each task and the role of interactivity in web-based documentaries.